In the early 2000’s, as the retail world reeled from the impact of Walmart, I found myself quoting one book with some frequency. That book was “The Discipline of Market Leaders ” by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema. Most of you are aware of the model by now. In a nutshell, there are three potential areas of market leadership: Operational Excellence, Product Leadership, and Customer Intimacy. Companies must be competent in all three, but the best companies pick one of the three to target as their “core ” (apologies for an oversimplification, but for our purposes today, this is close enough). Walmart was clearly the leader in operational excellence – its mass and super-efficient supply chain made it the low cost provider.

Most of my writings and speeches in those days exhorted retailers to stop trying to compete with Walmart on those terms, and to stake out one of the other two areas for their own. In fact, I believed product leadership was attainable by a rare few, so retailers would be better off focusing themselves on customer intimacy. This was my recipe for success in what I called “The Post Walmart World ” and the technologies I most prized enabled retailers to excel at customer intimacy.

Last week, as I listened to yet another person cite the Treacy/Wiersema model I was struck by how much times have changed. The omni-channel phenomenon has rendered it obsolete. Walmart remains operationally excellent, yet its comparable store sales have been flat for more than two years. When we look at the Apple phenomenon, it’s hard to cite an area where the company does NOT excel. Great products, an excruciatingly efficient supply chain, and customer service that boggles even this pain-in-the-neck customer’s mind. And so I wonder if in fact all three disciplines have been reduced to table stakes. Be efficient and price competitive or die. Sell some cool stuff or die. Hug your customers or die (unless you’re an airline…then you just cram them in because they have no other choices). Heck, even McDonalds’ has free wi-fi and its own in-store TV network now. What’s that all about? There’s nothing fast about that food besides picking it up at the counter.

In other words, the world is moving too fast, and information too freely for any customer to accept a retailer on its own terms. Just googling up the book title so I could find the correct spelling of the authors’ names presented me with four different selling prices. He who has Google (or the search engine of your choice) is an operationally efficient consumer.

So in an age of social networks, price transparency, and cross-channel shopping patterns what are the right disciplines for market leaders? What should our new technologies be supporting? I like Nikki Baird’s model: the five C’s of omni-channel retailing. And I submit that the best retailer will excel at all five. The five C’s is expressed in the diagram below:

A Brief Explanation Follows:

Content:

 Content is all the content that a retailer or brand can bring to bear to influence, enhance or shape the purchasing decision. This includes (but is not limited to) product/category information, videos, comments, comparisons and analysis. Supporting technologies include digital asset management (a must-have), content management systems, product pictures and 360 degree views, social network data aggregation tools, mobile web sites, and more.

Community:

 All the people that a customer might involve in the purchase decision, whether known or strangers. This includes retailer or brand employees, friends, family, interest groups, trusted reviewers, crowd sourced opinions and more. Supporting technologies are social networks, blogs, reviews and recommendations, and perhaps most importantly, mobile applications for customer-facing employees.

Commerce:

 All the power that a retailer or brand can bring to bear to grab the consumer’s product selection and monetize it – make it a transaction. Wherever that transaction is consummated, it should be convenient, clear, and efficient. Supporting technologies are eCommerce engines, Point of Sale, mobile web, apps, etc.

Context:

 Context is all about relevancy. It’s a function of where the customer is in the buying process, and physical proximity to a location where commerce is possible. I’d like to say there are supporting technologies to help determine context, but as far as I know there is no substitute for common sense. As one of our clients describes it “You want to be relevant but not creepy. ” Creepy is leaving one web site where you looked at faucets, going to another site to play Scrabble and being presented with fifteen ads for the same product you looked at on the other site. It’s out of context, and creepy. This is an area where technology can hurt you more than it can help you. It’s intrusive.

Customer:

 This fifth element is central and as such is the big difference between the old discipline of market leaders and the new one. ALL activities performed by today’s brand managers and retailers must MUST be focused around the customer. A ‘demand-driven supply chain’ is not a maturity model anymore. It is table stakes. Operational efficiency only matters if you want to make money serving the customer. You’ve still got to serve her.

All this is by way of saying I’m retiring my old slide deck. It’s a new world. And the customer is ALWAYS at the center of it all. Retail Winners recognize this. Others find ways to prop up earnings for a while, but the customer always votes with her wallet.